Up: Problem with FastTrak S150 SX4-M (and Promise PDC20378)

[Túlio Guimarães da Silva]

Hello, people,
   as it´s my first message in this list, I hope I´m not missing 
something. If so, please warn me. :)
  I did some digging in here, and found the following thread, from last 
January. Well, I have the exact same problem, but with a FastTrack S150 
SX4 (not M), with chipset PDC20621 (identified by 5.4-RELEASE as 20622) 
and 64MB ECC SDRAM. This board is installed in a HP ML 110 with an 
embedded two-channel P-ATA and a (factory-disabled) two-port S-ATA. The 
FastTrack is plugged to a factory-assembled 4-disk hotswap cage, and has 
two SATA disks on it.
  Well, to cut it short, I´ll say that I already tried to pick the most 
recent sys/dev/ata drivers from FTP, but couldn´t find them at 
current.freebsd.org, nor in .br mirrors. I was preparing to try CVS, but 
I bumped onto another problem...
  The bigger problem is, I have no other disks but these S-ATA, and this 
happens with P-ATA enabled or not (I would need it for the CD-ROM, but 
doesn´t work even with P-ATA disabled and booting with floppies). I also 
tried to "set hint.ata.0.disabled=1" (if such thing exists :P ), same 
problem again. It also seems to be irrelevant if it´s RAID 0,1, or 5. I 
get this message right upon install.
  That prevents me from putting the entire output from dmesg, but if 
necessary, I can try it on VMware, then maybe I could do a copy-paste. ;)
  So, what would you suggest? Is there any variable I could set upon 
booting that could workaround it? Or *must* we plug an ordinary P-ATA, 
install 5.x on it and then rework the drivers? (note: there´s no 
phisical space for one more HD, since the cage takes all 4 bays.) Is 
there any other alternative? :P
  Just to add, we have another identical ML-110 that we got to put to 
work by changing the RAID controller to a Highpoint 1820A, but then the 
LEDs on the cage don´t work, though this isn´t really an issue. Apart 
from that, it runs almost perfectly, booting right into a RAID 5 array - 
"almost" goes to Highpoint´s daemon, which is slightly outdated: it´s 
for FBSD 5.2 and needs a few "adjustments". ;)
  We tried FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE and 5.4-RELEASE. Any ideas? Errrr... did 
I forgot to mention anything? :)
  Anyway, thanks a lot for your time. Cheers,

Tulio G. da Silva

> Dave,
> one last note. Be sure to copy your dmesg output when modifying
> the controller mode and driver as this may indicate how the chip presents
> itself to the kernel and provide hints if a patch is needed.
>
> Chris
>
> On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 ctodd at chrismiller.com wrote:
>
> >
> > On Wed, 26 Jan 2005, Dave Myron wrote:
> >
> > > It's not red but it is the PRI_RAID IDE connector. I have the 
> controller set
> > > to IDE in the BIOS so it should act just as any other IDE controller
> > > (according to the manual and many other sources).
> >
> > True, but you know how that goes.
> >
> > > I have two hard drives on the primary IDE (not on the controller) 
> and a CD
> > > drive on the secondary IDE (also not on the controller). Then I 
> have two
> > > more hard drives on the PRI_RAID channel (which *is* the P-ATA 
> channel on
> > > the controller). Those two drives are getting the failure (or at 
> least one
> > > is - see the error messages in my original text).
> > >
> > > I wish I had an S-ATA drive to test with so that I could verify 
> that it's a
> > > problem with the P-ATA part of this controller.
> > >
> > > Any more ideas?
> >
> > Did you try leaving the Promise controller (in IDE mode) enabled and
> > disconnecting the drives? What about setting the controller into 
> raid mode
> > with or without the drives attached? Obviously don't do anything that
> > would cause any data loss on those drives (i.e. init the raid array).
> >
> > Sounds like something to do with Promise in the IDE mode. Perhaps the
> > kernel is detecting the chip and assuming raid is enabled. You could 
> also
> > try disabling the ar driver in the kernel for grins, then perhaps 
> the chip
> > will just show up as an IDE controller.
> >
> > I'm suspect the SATA raid functions work fine, but I believe the
> > controller also supports a non raid mode for SATA drives, 
> unfortunately I
> > don't have a spare to test this.
> >
> > In any event report back what you find so the driver can be fixed if
> > it seems to be the problem.
> >
> > Chris
> >